[Taxacom] Elimination of paraphyly: sensible or not?

Sat Feb 10 13:50:24 CST 2018

Yes, that’s it. An unresolved trichotomy. Compare that cladistic “discovery” with a hypothesis that Granddad begat Dad who begat Billy. Which is more informative?

I advance here a parallel with distinguishing cladistic relationships from evolutionary relationships. Yes, additional information is needed, and when it is available it should be used.

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Richard H. Zander
Missouri Botanical Garden – 4344 Shaw Blvd. – St. Louis – Missouri – 63110 – USA
richard.zander at mobot.org<mailto:richard.zander at mobot.org>
Web sites: http://www.mobot.org/plantscience/bfna/bfnamenu.htm and http://www.mobot.org/plantscience/resbot/

From: John Grehan [mailto:calabar.john at gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, February 10, 2018 1:41 PM
To: Richard Zander
Cc: Kenneth Kinman; taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Elimination of paraphyly: sensible or not?

The issue of the common ancestor of Bill and his Dad is not informative unless it is posed as a three taxon statement (with respect to a fourth outgroup). My limited familiarity with cladistics is with differentiated entities, not within populations of individual organisms so perhaps someone else could comment. Perhaps if the question were whether Bill is more closely related to Dad than Mom (or Mum) the answer would be a trichotomy (technically unresolved cladogram).

John Grehan

On Sat, Feb 10, 2018 at 2:19 PM, Richard Zander <Richard.Zander at mobot.org<mailto:Richard.Zander at mobot.org>> wrote:
I don’t think so.

Take Billy and his Dad. Who is the common ancestor?

Consider Billy, Dad and Granddad. Which two are more closely related to each other than to the third? Using cladistics you can probably get a resolved cladogram in this very simplistic puzzle of progenitor-descendant relationship.

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Richard H. Zander
Missouri Botanical Garden – 4344 Shaw Blvd. – St. Louis – Missouri – 63110 – USA<https://maps.google.com/?q=4344+Shaw+Blvd.+%E2%80%93+St.+Louis+%E2%80%93+Missouri+%E2%80%93+63110+%E2%80%93+USA&entry=gmail&source=g>
richard.zander at mobot.org<mailto:richard.zander at mobot.org>
Web sites: http://www.mobot.org/plantscience/bfna/bfnamenu.htm and http://www.mobot.org/plantscience/resbot/

From: John Grehan [mailto:calabar.john at gmail.com<mailto:calabar.john at gmail.com>]
Sent: Saturday, February 10, 2018 1:02 PM
To: Richard Zander
Cc: Kenneth Kinman; taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu<mailto:taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>

Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Elimination of paraphyly: sensible or not?

However one might want to call it and however one might want to represent it, the primary issue behind all evolutionary relationships from the beginning until now has been whether A is more closely related to B than C. Cladistics is one way of doing that (and within cladistics many ways to determine how). That is not to say that there may be others just as good.

John Grehan

On Sat, Feb 10, 2018 at 1:54 PM, Richard Zander <Richard.Zander at mobot.org<mailto:Richard.Zander at mobot.org>> wrote:
Ken:
Hörandl and Stuessy are trying to find common ground with cladists. They aver that discovering shared descent is a primary desideratum. My stance regarding shared ancestors is that this is not particularly important, but progenitor-descendant relationships are, simply because the latter can be identified, often anyway, while modeling shared descent between sister groups involves unnamed, invisible, hypothetical progenitors of sister groups, and is primarily a clumsy attempt to add an evolutionary dimension to a cluster analysis dichotomous tree.  Shared descent of a lineage is a fine concept, but a lineage should not be a branching series of nodes, one node generating the next, but instead a sometimes-branching series of taxa.

Richard

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Richard H. Zander
Missouri Botanical Garden - 4344 Shaw Blvd. - St. Louis - Missouri - 63110 - USA<https://maps.google.com/?q=4344+Shaw+Blvd.+-+St.+Louis+-+Missouri+-+63110+-+USA&entry=gmail&source=g>
richard.zander at mobot.org<mailto:richard.zander at mobot.org><mailto:richard.zander at mobot.org<mailto:richard.zander at mobot.org>>
Web sites: http://www.mobot.org/plantscience/bfna/bfnamenu.htm and http://www.mobot.org/plantscience/resbot/

From: Kenneth Kinman [mailto:kinman at hotmail.com<mailto:kinman at hotmail.com>]
Sent: Friday, February 09, 2018 5:05 PM
To: Richard Zander; taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu<mailto:taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Elimination of paraphyly: sensible or not?

Hi Richard,

      Do you have any opinion on Horandl and Stuessy's 2010 paper in the journal Taxon ( "Paraphyletic groups as natural units of biological classification" ).

      For anyone who has not read it, it can be found it here:

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Elvira_Hoerandl/publication/230818733_Paraphyletic_groups_as_natural_units_of_biological_classification/links/0912f504f1250eb15b000000/Paraphyletic-groups-as-natural-units-of-biological-classification.pdf

________________________________
From: Taxacom <taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu<mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu><mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu<mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>>> on behalf of Richard Zander <Richard.Zander at mobot.org<mailto:Richard.Zander at mobot.org><mailto:Richard.Zander at mobot.org<mailto:Richard.Zander at mobot.org>>>
Sent: Friday, February 9, 2018 4:45 PM
To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu<mailto:taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu><mailto:taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu<mailto:taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>>
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Elimination of paraphyly: sensible or not?

Paraphyly is not a process in nature. It models nothing real. It is a gimmick used by cladists because there is no innate taxon concept in cladistics.  It occurs when one taxon generates one or more other taxa of the same taxonomic level.

Phylogenetics is not the study of evolution. It is the study of dichotomous trees generated by non-ultrametric cluster analysis using character state changes. Cladistics is better at grouping evolutionarily related taxa than cluster analysis by overall similarity, but it does not model an evolutionary tree.

To study evolutionary trees you need to be aware of (have information about) radiation of descendants from progenitors. Trees restricted to sister groups do not allow hypotheses of serial evolution.

This discussion is about classification based on a particular kind of cluster analysis, not evolution. Classification should reflect what we know about evolution, not cluster analysis.

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Richard H. Zander

Missouri Botanical Garden - 4344 Shaw Blvd. - St. Louis - Missouri - 63110 - USA<https://maps.google.com/?q=4344+Shaw+Blvd.+-+St.+Louis+-+Missouri+-+63110+-+USA&entry=gmail&source=g>

richard.zander at mobot.org<mailto:richard.zander at mobot.org><mailto:richard.zander at mobot.org<mailto:richard.zander at mobot.org>>

Web sites: http://www.mobot.org/plantscience/bfna/bfnamenu.htm and http://www.mobot.org/plantscience/resbot/
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